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by Larry Thacker

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At this view along our walk, the field
is a sort of blurred marble on kept green
under the fine blue of sky, but then
another few steps parts the white
stone dots like a spell, turning them
mostly green, vanished, the blue above
never yielding the over-watch.

Like a smooth math problem
it all seems to expand in a breath
of consideration, contract to ordered form,
governed only by our speed of walking
within view of the many identical
rolling hills of gleaming stones.

So like the unfocused details of violence
in distant places, on unnamed shores,
the epitaphs are yet clear until we are
brought closer to a finer seeing,
coming to rights with summed sacrifices
in lined perfection.
————————-I am tempted
to count them up, though our park map
reveals their numbers, known,
or unknown, Christian, or Jewish,
or Muslim, or no preference, whether man
or woman? War after war after war.

I’d like to think they know exactly why
they’re here, mustered in a last formation.

I dare not offer that reasoning myself,
it not being my place, leaving that duty
for a whispered logic between stones

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